Even Sinners Still Have Souls

by Joy, E. n.

  “A lot, Mr. Baker,” I whispered, pulling my bottom lip in.

  “Girly, years ago the rent of one of these apartments was more than what I charge for all of them now combined. Because I felt sorry for you people and wanted to give back, I lowered my standards.”

  Shoot, a couple years ago he didn’t even know me. That’s 'cause I wasn’t living here. Instead, me and my family was living in a better place. We were living in an actual house, raising my family well because my husband had it together. He was working as a longshoreman. Back then my husband was bringing in more money than he or I had ever seen in our lives.

  “Girl, are you listening to me?”

  Mr. Baker’s sharp voice brought me back to the present. “Yes,, sir.”

  Mr. Baker must have thought I was dumb. I knew doggone well that not only was the government subsiding our rent, but Mr. Baker was getting a huge tax cut from Uncle Sam every year as well. Shoot, the way I saw it, he was benefiting now more than ever before. Since the job market was so bad now, couldn’t nobody afford the rent he was charging. He had no choice but to evict the full paying residents and make the building low-income.

  “Yes, Mr. Baker, I’m listening. I just need more time, please.” I begged desperately.

  He stared me up and down lustfully making me feel dirty. “I could do that, but what are you gonna give me for some more time, huh, Shortcake?”

  I was dying inside. But I knew I had no choice but to repeat the magic words: “Whatever you willing to take, Mr. Baker.”

  Without reprieve, Mr. Baker unzipped his pants. And like before, I found myself lowering my body to my knees. The entire time my shoulders were shaking.

  Chapter Two

  Things hadn’t always been so bad. Nor were my husband and I so pathetic. Once upon a time we had ourselves a life. A normal one. A natural one, ‘cause nothing about the one we had now was in any way normal or natural to me. I was still working as a secretary at the Docks in San Pedro when I met Joshua. I had been working there since I was seventeen. When I met him, I was twenty-two and he was twenty-five. He was the shy longshoreman that all the manly-looking longshore females wanted to get their claws into. While I filed documents, typed away and answered phones, Joshua loaded and unloaded ships all day. I guess you could say that I was the typical lady doing typical lady things.

  Joshua had a different idea of what a lady was and how she should be. That was evident by the way he treated them, of which I eventually found out first hand. In his eyes, a woman should be quiet, look soft and be sweet. And the rough women we worked with were anything but that. They were cruder than the men sometimes. Joshua also felt a woman should stay home and cater to her husband, and despite how much I liked my job, for Joshua’s fine behind I was willing to wait on him hand and foot. Lord, was that my mistake? I couldn’t help it. One look into those dreamy eyes, and boy was I hooked.

  My husband felt that I was so unique. “From your freckles to that red hair all over that pretty head of yours,” he would say. “There is just no other like you.”

  My husband was from the south. He moved to California to break free from his family. He said he was so used to his mama and father taking care of him, that he wanted to see if he could make it on his own. He said he wanted a change, a fresh start, that Louisiana had just gotten too slow and too boring for him. Looking back, I realized that being a country boy in Southern California didn’t get him into nothing but trouble. He should have stayed out there with his family. Even if that meant we would have never met. I knew that was what was best for him. I wondered if he felt the same.

  “That’s why they call you Shortcake right, baby?” Joshua had said, referring to my freckles and hair.

  I nodded with a nervous smile on my face. “Yep. That’s why they call me Shortcake. Like the doll, Strawberry Shortcake.”

  “Yeah, well they should call you Angel.”

  I looked away so he didn’t see me blush. I may have been only twenty-two years old, but I was too doggone old to be blushing. Joshua just seemed to have had that kind of affect on me; make me do things I felt I shouldn’t.

  Just four months after dating Joshua, I was able to go to work and flash my rock to the other ladies who always seemed to surround my baby even though they knew he was taken. They would buy him lunch and what not. Some would even make him lunch in an attempt to impress him with their horrible culinary skills. I guess I couldn’t blame them. My baby had a hard, rock-chiseled body with strong arms, a baby face and piercing eyes. I knew his arms were strong, because when we play wrestled he tossed me around like I weighed nothing. I was a stocky five feet tall and weighed 120 pounds, but it was all in the right places. My hips and butt carried most of my weight, and my baby loved my Cola bottle shape.

  When those silly chicks went to work on him, I would just sit back and laugh. I knew my baby wasn’t going anywhere. And the engagement ring he’d bought me only confirmed it.

  We had a small wedding, ’cause I had no family around. They all lived in Texas where my mother was from. She came to California following my father. I had no real way to contact any of them so I left it as it was. The important things was that I had the bestest husband and we could start a family of our own, which was what I always wanted.

  My husband found us our first home after about six months into our four-year marriage. It wasn’t in the best neighborhood in South Central, Los Angeles, but it could have been worse. We lived on Jarvis Street. There was an apartment building across from us that kept up a lot of racket and drove me crazy. Most of the people that lived there were women, and each had at least three kids apiece. Whenever I would sit on our porch sipping on iced tea or eating something, a few of them would come outside and watch me. None of the looks they cast my way were ever friendly. I’d never done anything to those women so I had no idea why they were so hateful toward me. Maybe they were just like those women Joshua and I used to work with- jealous that I had a man. Or maybe they were jealous that I stayed in a house while they lived in government subsidized apartments.

  In fact, one of them in particular, who always had a cigarette in her mouth, used to give me the dirtiest looks. It was almost like she woke up in the morning just to come outside and mean mug me on my way to work. Whenever I looked her way, she didn’t back down. She kept her eyes wide and in a frozen position. It was weird, like she wanted to shout, “Yeah, it’s me and I’m looking at you.” But I always ignored the stupidity. Joshua said that’s what is called a hater. Whatever.

  One day in particular, I was at the local market doing some shopping after work. I wanted to make my baby some spaghetti, garlic bread and some creamed corn. For dessert I was going to make a red velvet cake, the same type of cake we served at our wedding. I almost dropped my handheld basket when I saw who was ahead of me at the checkout stand. It was her. The woman who always came outside and made it a point to let me know she wasn’t feeling me by giving me a dirty look. I tried to pretend I didn’t recognize her. But when she went to slap one of her kid’s hands for reaching near me to grab a candy bar, her eyes flickered my way once, twice, and then her eyes bucked. But it seemed as though she was trying to act like she didn’t know me either. Good.

  Once all her food was totaled, the cashier, a young teenage girl, said, “Ma’am that will be one hundred and sixty dollars and five cents.”

  The neighbor woman held something in her hands. It was a card. She swiped the card so fast in the little machine that it was almost like she hadn’t swiped it at all. Then it disappeared in her purse.

  The girl behind the register said, “EBT?” so loud I could hear, and so could the people behind me. The two teenage girls behind me snickered.

  EBT was the technical name for food stamp card. Some people who used them were so embarrassed that they would even go as far as getting out of line if someone they knew popped up and might see them spending ‘em. It seems the cashier had done it on purpose to get a laugh out of the other teenagers in line. They must hav
e been her friends or something. She may have gotten a laugh out of her two little buddies, but she got pure humiliation from my neighbor. What the cashier had done was just as embarrassing to my neighbor as if when a person had something in their groceries, like some condoms or tampons, and the cashier raises them up for all to see.

  The woman’s eyes bucked, and she looked from the cashier to me then back to the cashier. She then looked down and said,” Yes.”

  “All right. Enter your pin,” the cashier told her.

  She punched four numbers in the machine quickly.

  Once the cash register made a sound and the receipt was printed, the woman snatched it from the cashier. She turned, looked at me with an evil look and I could have sworn she called me the B-word before she wheeled out her cart with a baby seated in front, and the other three close on her heels.

  The cashier confirmed what I thought she had called me. “Ma’am, did you hear what she said?” the cashier asked.

  I shook my head while placing my items on the counter. I was not going to let her see she got to me even if she did. But who knew that her fate would soon be mine?

  Chapter Three

  At first things were better than I could expect. A year later, I gave birth to our son whom I named after Joshua. I gave him the nickname Jo Jo. Work was going good and of course, since my baby was a country boy, he eventually ordered that I quit my job and take care of our baby boy. Little Tricie came three years later. And as both my kids grew, slowly I noticed my husband was growing too-away from us. He had a new buddy. This to me was fine since he said when he moved out here he left all his family and friends behind. But soon this new friend, Luke, was taking up a lot of my husband’s time. They were always going out shooting pool and drinking. Then my husband started having a hard time between paychecks, which was crazy, ’cause my husband made a grip being a longshoreman. Then it all made sense to me that he wasn’t just going out drinking and shooting pool.

  One night, just as I was putting my now four-year old Tricie to sleep, Jo Jo was already knocked out in his room. Their daddy came through the door laughing so loud he almost woke them up. I closed Tricie’s bedroom door and peeked in Jo Jo’s room. Luckily, the noise hadn’t woke him either. I took a breath of relief and then rushed out to the living room. There was Joshua, some man, and a half-dressed woman. He didn’t even see me because he was too busy falling on the couch cracking up laughing. The dude, who looked like trouble, and the woman did the same. So there they sat looking like the Three Stooges right there in my living room.

  I stood in the center of our living room and cleared my throat. Three heads popped up and looked at me.

  “Oh, hey, baby.” Joshua gave me a smile. That night I noticed there was something different, much different, about Joshua. His eyes were glazed and dilated. He couldn’t focus and kept fidgeting. His words were slurred like he had lock jaw.

  I didn’t smile back, just said dryly,” Hi.”

  He introduced me to his guests. “Baby, this is my friend, Luke I was telling you about.” He looked toward the woman. “And this is Luke’s friend, Kendra.”

  Luke looked dirty and grimy. He had dark, cracked lips, circles underneath his eyes, ashy looking skin, frumpy, wrinkled clothes and uncombed hair. Kendra didn’t look much better. Sex appeal didn’t rid her from looking like she stank. No matter how low-cut her top was or how high her skirt, that was something that just couldn’t be ignored.

  Still, I nodded to both of them.

  Luke nodded back, and Kendra waved like we were old friends.

  “What’s going on?” I asked calmly. “It’s late.”

  “I brought my friends over so we could have a little party, and I got something fun for you to try, baby.”

  “What?” My eyes narrowed.

  “This,” Luke said. He pulled a glass pipe and a cigarette lighter out of his pocket.

  I gasped. Before I could utter another word, Luke lit it. Instantly the smell of burnt plastic filled the air. I knew what they were doing. They were smoking crack. My mom died from this when I was eighteen.

  I turned away in disgusted. “Joshua, is this what you’ve been doing all this time? Is this why you been low on cash?”

  He ignored me and snatched the pipe from Luke.

  I turned my face away, not wanting to see my husband do that. I covered my ears at the sounds he was making.

  Joshua finally said, “Come on, baby. You’re next. Try it.”

  “No!” I ran from the room and could hear them giggling behind me. I locked myself in the bathroom until they left, praying to God this was all just a nightmare.

  Soon Joshua wasn’t going to work at all, and we were getting behind in bills. He started selling everything that meant something to him: His sports memorabilia, expensive cologne, designer clothes and shoes. His car was next, and one day his wedding ring was gone. He would have taken mine too, but I start hiding it in my underwear before I would go to sleep. But one day he caught me slipping. I’d laid down for an afternoon nap and forgot to take the ring off. The next thing I knew, I woke up and that was gone too. I didn’t talk to him for days.

  The only thing Joshua didn’t part with was the gun his daddy gave to him long ago. The one time he tried to pawn it he came right back. I figured there was hope for him yet. But then again, that was me; hanging in there-always looking for a ray of hope.

  Speaking of having hope, I had never really been a spiritual person, but there I was in church every Sunday praying for my husband, praying he would kick his crack habit and we would have our old life back. I figured adding a little faith to my hope couldn’t hurt.

  When I wasn’t in church or on my knees praying, I was begging Joshua’s boss, Jimmy, not to fire him. At first Jimmy tried to work with him, but he was missing too many days. Jimmy told me that on the days Joshua did go to work, he showed up high. Jimmy said it was too much of a liability.

  Joshua’s so-called friends, Luke and Kendra, stopped coming around when my hubby lost his job. The handsomeness he once had was replaced with what was left after the drugs, which was nothing but a Skelton of what Joshua used to be. Of course, Joshua didn’t care ‘cause the drugs had taken over his soul.

  Next, we lost our house and soon I found myself in the welfare office getting an EBT card too. Now I knew why my old neighbor had been so embarrassed that day in the store, years ago. Who wanted the world to know they were so broke that they had to depend on the government to eat? Now I was embarrassed, but my neighbor’s humiliation was nothing compared to mine. I ended up moving from my cozy home to an apartment that was right across the street from my home. As if adding salt to the wound, it was the same one my mean muggin’ neighbor resided in.

  I remember her and her kids sitting on the steps cracking up at me and my kids as we dragged our things from our old house to our new apartment. We didn’t have much; just our clothes, couches, beds, tables and a few electronics, with the exception of our television, which Joshua had smoked off.

  Joshua’s smoking was the reason why we were having to downgrade our lifestyle, and here he had the nerve to be out smoking instead of helping us move. Boy oh boy my neighbor got a kick out of seeing my little behind dragging my sofa and love seat one by one across the street on Jo Jo’s skateboard. She was just a cackling and pointing. Like always, I ignored her. Now she could mad dog me directly in my face, because I was now her neighbor!

  The gods can be so cruel, I thought. The apartment was not even half the size of our old home. Sometimes I would just stand in my kitchen window and stare at my old house. I’d close my eyes and envision how it would be to still live there. I tried not to hate the new residents of my old home, even when they neglected the house. They didn’t water the grass or pull up the weeds. I wanted to be back there so badly, but I knew even if I was still there, things would never be the same as they used to be before the drugs.

  Funny, I never accepted my apartment as “home”. It just didn’t feel like it. But hey, t
hat was better than me and my babies being out in the street. Joshua probably never accepted the apartment as home because he’d never spent a night there. Heck, he was probably so high he didn’t even remember where we had moved to. If that was the case, part of me hoped that Joshua wouldn’t find us, because I felt that my kids and I needed to start fresh-without him. That was the strong part of me talking. However, the weak part of me, the part that still loved him, wanted him to get himself together so we could all be a happy family again.

  One day after church I spotted Joshua hanging out on the corner panhandling. I would have chosen a cashier calling me out over a food stamp card any day than having my kids see their daddy like that on the streets.

  “Daddy’s just sick. Daddy’s not feeling well,” I’d said to the children as the wifely and motherly instincts kicked in and had me take Joshua and lead him home with us. “Come on, let’s go home so you can get better and not be sick anymore,” I’d told Joshua, more so for the kid’s sake than his.

  Once we got back to the apartment, he simply ate and crashed. It seemed like he’d slept for a week straight. When he finally did get up and come to, I wanted to tell him to leave and not come back until he got himself together in rehab or something, but I didn’t. The kids were just far too excited to have Daddy back home and seemingly not sick anymore.

  Joshua, however, didn’t share the kids’ sentiments. He was right back to his old ways; coming and going. He was doing more going than coming. Nothing about him being there made our living situation any better. He would show up, barge his way in and sleep for days. Then he’d take money from my purse, steal away into the night and be gone for some more days. When he saw I had gotten slick to him going in my purse and I’d picked another spot to hide the county money, he got slick too.

  One day, at the first of the month, I came home from the post office and all the groceries I had bought with the EBT card, a whole month’s worth, was gone. I knew only he could have done it. It made me sick to my stomach because I had nothing, being that I had paid the rent and utilities and bought Jo Jo and Tricie a few clothes. I had a few cents to my name. At first, I didn’t even trip knowing I only had a few cents to get me through to the next month. My kids had clothes on their backs and food to put in their bellies. Now I had nothing and I had no one to call for help. No mama, no family no friends. I didn’t have a relationship with anyone at my church since I hadn’t really been going there that long. So there was no way I would feel comfortable asking them for help. They would probably think I was only coming so I could get something from them and not Jesus.